Women-owned

Hi! My name is Tam, I am the founder of Zadi Studios!

I fell in love with glass as a child. There was just something about it. The colour, the movement, the fact that something so hot and wild could be coaxed into something beautiful. I never quite got over it.

After a COVID “what am I doing with my life?!” moment, I decided to finally try it. Shortly afterwards, I was selected to study at the Corning Museum of Glass in New York. That was it. I was hooked.

What had started as a childhood fascination suddenly became a very serious obsession. I decided I wanted to learn the craft properly, and somehow managed to convince a Murano glass master to take me on as an apprentice. Then came the less glamorous part: months of immigration paperwork, working rights and trying to convince various authorities that this was, in fact, a sensible thing to do.

Eventually, I quit my secure government job, packed up my life, spent pretty much all of my savings and moved to Italy. At 30-something, I left behind the sensible, stable path to start again at the bottom of a furnace.

For three years, I lived and worked alongside Murano's glass masters, learning a craft that has been passed from maestro to apprentice for generations. I was one of only a handful of women working on the island and am believed to be the only Australian to have undertaken a traditional Muranese apprenticeship, becoming a 'serventino' within a Murano furnace.

I love glass because it is a bit like dancing. It takes patience, practice and an enormous amount of repetition, but somehow, in the middle of all that heat and chaos, it quietens my mind.

I love teaching for exactly the same reason I love making. Glass is wonderfully physical, playful and addictive. I want people to experience that for themselves, whether they consider themselves creative or not. I am passionate about preserving traditional crafts, and opening up accessibility to them.

I would be honoured if you joined me.

I currently offer beginner glassmaking classes, with expressions of interest open for longer courses and masterclasses with visiting Murano maestri.

I can't wait to share the dream with you. Let's open up the furnace doors in Queensland!

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